Recent reviews by McNum

If a game can keep my attention for 130 hours, I can probably recommend it.

It has a great style, fun characters, villains that are fun to hate, and is a solid JRPG with its own little twists on the combat. Making the dungeons crawling a stealth game is also a rather unique take on it.

The only downside I see to this game is that it's rather long. Beating the game in less than 100 hours on your first go, especially if you're going for the Royal extra content, is probably not going to happen unless you skip all events.

But basically if you like stylish long JRPGs with a colorful and interesting cast of characters you proably already own this game. If not, you should!

Guybrush returns to finally find The Secret of Monkey Island!

Return to Monkey Island is a classic-style point and click Adventure Game, and why wouldn't it be with Ron Gilbert returning to the series? As an Adventure game, it really comes down to two things: Good writing, and good puzzles. And thankfully, Return to Monkey Island delivers both.

The game has Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate set out to fine the Secret once and for all, but his nemesis, the evil undead scourge of the seas LeChuck, is having similar ideas. And so the race is on, or at least that's how it seems. The game also features an interesting narrative framing, but I won't spoil it.

Puzzle quality is good, a few puzzles share the same solution, which gets a little repetetive, but there are also some quite clever ones as well. And of course, the Book of Hints is there in case the sometimes bizarre logic you need to apply doesn't quite land with you, it can offer incereasingly specific hints from vague nudges to outright spoiling the puzzle for you.

Overall, Return to Monkey Island feels like a worthy successor to the series, both MI1 and 2 that Ron Gilbert worked on and the rest of the games as well. If the series were to end here, I wouldn't mind it. But if another Monkey Island shows up, I'd buy it, too.

If you have a VR headset and don't have this game, you're likely doing it wrong.

Beat Saber on its own is a good argument for VR. It's fun, it's immediately understandable, and the music is nice, too. You have a laser sword in each hand, usually a blue and a red one, though some songs use other colors, and must cut cubes with arrows on them in tune to the music. Some songs have walls you must avoid and mines which you shouldn't cut. But that's really all there is to it. Choose a song, choose a style and difficulty, and then get cutting.

Beat Saber is just a simple idea done well. And if you need one game to show off what VR is all about, Beat Saber is a good choice.

The Wonderful 101 is Platinum Games unfiltered.

It is an odd game, and one you definitely won't be able to understand for the first several hours of the game. But do not worry, this is normal.

You play as the Wonderful 100, a team of 100 superheroes who can unite into various weapons, such as fists, swords, guns, whips, and so on. In classic Platinum spectacle action style, you then fight your way through the menacing GEATHJERK foes, comboing, dodging, and blocking as you go. By drawing shapes with the right analog, you change weapon mid-battle, and mastering this is the key to mastering the entire game. What weapon to turn into when is a choice you'll make over and over.

The game also has a habit of changing gameplay on you. Hijacking an enemy spaceship gives you a shooter, all bosses have some weird trick to them, like a Star Fox-like battle, and some stages are flat out copying gameplay from classic games. If this is something you like or not is up to you. I liked it.

Speaking of bosses, they are spectacular, every single one. You go through the first operation, fighting a few unique enemies you think could be bosses... and then the real boss shows up and is an entire level to itself. All bosses are. And it's amazing.

The Wonderful 101 also has a spectacular presentation. While the graphics are definitely from 2013, and from Wii U, no less, the style and music is timeless. Add to that a story that keeps escalating to a silly degree and you have a memorable game like few others.

The difficulty is of note, too. This game is hard. If you're not a Platinum Games veteran or have trouble adjusting to drawing shapes to change weapons, you will get your shiny head handed to you on Normal. However, the only thing hurt by using a Continue is your end of level ranking, you revive where you fell and the enemies are still hurt. It is hard, but forgiving.

All in all, The Wonderful 101 is an odd game. It's very unique for a character action game, and it being a Platinum Games game is very readily apparent throughout the entire game.

The Wonderful 101 is an acquired taste, no doubt, but if you like it, there really is nothing that compares to it.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is more or less Dragon Ball Z as an action RPG. You like DBZ? Chances are you'll like this game. You don't care about DBZ? Well, the game is unlikely to keep you interested.

Exploring the world is nice, and the battles are engaging enough, if a little samey at times, and overall it's an enjoyable experience. The graphics look about as good as it gets for Dragon Ball in a free camera video game. FighterZ does the style better, but it can cheat in ways this game cannot.

If there's one thing that bothers me, it's that you play surprisingly little as Goku for a game called Kakarot.

This game is stupid in all the right ways. You choose a map, a car, and a victim, and then you set off to see how badly you can injure your character. Which, since he can ragdoll and get heavily dismembered, is quite a lot.

If you like ragdoll physics and crashing things into other things, this is definitely worth looking at. It's also a nice little stress reliever as you can put any face on the unfortunate collision-prone person that you want.

The game is also getting steady updates with new vehicles to smash and new maps, but if those aren't enough, there are plenty of crash-tastic maps in the workshop.

If matching three or more gems together for a pleasing sound and some points sounds like a good time for you, you could do much worse than Bejeweled 3. You can do it puzzle style, survivial style, time attack style, or perhaps my favorite: Zen style. Where you just match gems forever to soothing music and no chance for failure. Better than it sounds, honest, and very relaxing.

If pure match-3 gameplay is what you want, try Bejeweled 3. It's very good at that.

Sonic Mania can stand tall next to classics like Sonic 3 & Knuckles and not feel embarrassed at all.

It absolutely nails the physics of classic Sonic and does really feel like a lost Sonic game of old most of the time. Only the HD introduction video and some more modern designs for some of the bosses really give away the secret that this is not a old classic, but a brand new Sonic.

Is it as good as the classics, then? Eh, mostly. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is a high standard to be compared to, but the fact alone that Sonic Mania can be compared to it is high praise. The stages may go on too long, and the boss fights might be a little too clever for their own good at times, and the game seems really eager to pull crush deaths out of nowhere, but the game does feel "right". Of course, it inherits some of the strageness of the classic Sonics, too. Be ready for the physics breaking down in their own unique ways, like a proper Sonic game does.

Overall, if you like the classic Sonics, Mania is a must have. If you just want to know why people like them, this is a good game to start out with.

XCOM 2 has a strange twist on how to do a sequel. In short: You lost in EXCOM: Enemy Unknown, now what are you going to do about that?

Set 20 years after you got your butt handed to you in XCO:EU, you must now lead the rag-tag band of rebels who hijacked an alien transport and strike the aliens from the shadows as you uncover the sinister secrets of the Avatar Project. (No, blue cat-people aren't it.)

If you've played the previous XCOM, you know what to expect. If not, XCOM 2 is a hybrid turn-based tactics game/base and resource management game. You go out, shoot aliens, take their stuff, and use that to build new weapons, armor, and facilities to go back out there and shoot more aliens. At least, tat's what you want to do, but this is XCOM. And XCOM has a reputation to maintain, so expect the aliens and there human...ish collaborators ADVENT to put up a fight.

In all, the game is more XCOM, and while the tactics part has been improved, the stratgy part is a little... off. It feels more like a board game than the previous game, and the addition of an unstoppable Doom Timer, which you can only set back, but never stop adds some stress to the formerly safe part of the game. The tactical missions also gained turn limits, some more generous than others, which can come as a nasty surprise if you're used to a more careful approach.

One big shoutout has to go to the above the call of duty mod support Firaxis is offering here. When you download the Develeopment Tools, you get ALL of the game. The only thing you can't modify is the XCOM2.exe file itself. Everything else? Go for it! Want to make aliens easier or harder to handle? Want to make your own solider classes? Want to wear silly hats? Want to turn your rifles into corgis? You can! All of that and more!

It's a bit tricky to get this game to actually work in Winows 7/8, but it's worth a bit of trouble to do so. Why? Because it's Doom! THE Doom.

It's a classic, it's not easy, and it was the big bad boogeyman of its time. And it actually holds up pretty well today, thanks to its action-packed levels and varied enemies. So if you're in the mood for some old-school action or just want to see what all the hubbub was about, I can easily recommend Doom. It's one of the old greats, and it has aged like a fine wine.

And if glorious a 320x240 resolution turns you off, there are compeporary engines that you can use to load the game in, instead of using DOSBox as it comes packed with here. But I kind of prefer the autentic giant pixels for this one.

RIP AND TEAR!